The last word, our series about emotions and states of mind in books, focuses on depictions of dithering this month, from Hamlet to the ‘maybe-boyfriend’ of Anna Burns’s Milkman

The artist, potter and author on his middle-of-the-night anxiety reading, wanting to be a poet, and the Japanese classic he wishes he had read

The Pulitzer winner on her love of Trollope, her passion for cooking and the Ian McEwan novel she feels is overrated

Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them

The novelist on learning from John Updike, failing to read Anthony Trollope and the laugh-out-loud comedy of Nina Stibbe

Childhood classics, colourful racers and memoirs of horse whisperers … the novelist and horse lover gallops through the best riding reads

On 31 October 1517, Luther kickstarted a revolution in Christianity that can still be felt in novels by authors from Daniel Defoe to John Updike

Little Women, Les Misérables and now Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde have all spawned followups by different authors. But are they ever any good?

From desert treks and imprisonment to unexpected love and bitter conflict, a historian chooses books that record remarkable, but often forgotten, lives

Recently we brought you our 10 best vicars. Here are your suggestions as to who should have made the list

From the origins of Uncle Tom to the stories of revolutionary, radical women, Michael Griffith takes us on a tour of literary Cincinnati – including Toni Morrison, Edmund White and a drive to attract America’s best poets